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THREE ROBOTS REPORT BACK ON THE HABITATS IN WHICH HUMANITY CHOSE TO SEE OUT ITS FINAL DAYS
John Scalzi
X-Bot 4000: Before we begin, I want it noted for the record that K-VRC should not have been trusted to drive the shuttle.
K-VRC: What are you talking about? I’m an amazing pilot!
X-Bot 4000: When we visited the survivalist camp you landed us in their minefield.
K-VRC: Pffft. Barely.
11-45-G: A bird that landed in front of us exploded.
K-VRC: Only a little! And also cleared a path for us to the encampment!
11-45-G: You can’t claim that was planned.
K-VRC: Whatever. Look, this isn’t about me. It’s about science.
X-Bot 4000: It wasn’t science that was going to blow our shiny metal butts to smithereens.
K-VRC: I hardly ever endangered us after that one time. Anyway. Let’s talk about the survivalist camp.
X-Bot 4000: It confused me. They were called ‘survivalist camps’ but they were just full of dead people. That’s just false advertising.
K-VRC: Right? And according to my thorough historical research—
11-45-G: You did research?
K-VRC: I found a human archive called Wikipedia.
11-45-G: And you read it.
K-VRC: I skimmed it very meaningfully. And it said that the survivalists were actually looking forward to the end of civilization!
11-45-G: Yes. Many humans thought that with freedom from government-sponsored medical attention and enough bullets and venison jerky, they could found a utopian society.
X-Bot 4000: Well, I saw the bullets. The casings, anyway. The venison jerky, not so much.
11-45-G: Humans quickly hunted deer to extinction, along with every other animal larger than a cat—
K-VRC: Humans were snackish.
11-45-G: —and when the deer ran out, they started raiding each other’s encampments. Which explained the minefield.
K-VRC: And that blood pit!
11-45-G: It wasn’t a blood pit. It was just a primitive booby trap.
K-VRC: It was a pit, right? With spikes? Which the invading survivalists fell on, piercing their skin, thus releasing the blood, into the pit?
11-45-G:…Fine. It was a blood pit.
X-Bot 4000: Those dudes made it through a minefield and a bunch of barbed wire, dodged a bunch of bullets, and still ended up being survivalist cult kebabs.
11-45-G: But at least they died free of governmental constraint.
X-Bot 4000: On a spike!
K-VRC: On two spikes in some cases.
X-Bot 4000: It just amazed me that the whole of humanity would try to make it through the end of civilization with guns and spikes.
K-VRC: Not all of them. Just the poor ones!
11-45-G: The survivalists had few economic or social advantages and even fewer options. The wealthy, however, had a variety of more sophisticated survival strategies. Which brings us to the next destination on our list.
K-VRC: Ooooh! And it was my favorite!
K-VRC: It was the unsinkable libertarian dream that was seasteading!
X-BOT 4000: It was just an old oil rig.
K-VRC: Technically, yes, but also, a fully sovereign nation state on the high seas!
X-BOT 4000: Filled with skeletons.
K-VRC: Everything’s filled with skeletons now. You can’t judge it for that.
11-45-G: He’s not entirely wrong. During the collapse, some wealthy humans thought that withdrawing from the chaos of the mainland to smaller and more easily defensible platforms in the ocean would increase their chances of long-term survival.
X-Bot 4000: Yeah, as long as you don’t need to sustain yourself. Deer can’t swim across the ocean, so what did they expect to eat?
11-45-G: Fish and sea greens, and protein from the sea. The problem was by that time the seas were overfished and the food chain was saturated by microplastics.
K-VRC: If they could have learned to eat tiny exfoliating beads, they would have been fine!
X-Bot 4000: They all became skeletons. Exfoliating was not their problem.
11-45-G: The seasteaders made one other tactical error, which happened because they were mostly tech millionaires.
X-Bot 4000: Right, ‘tech millionaire’. I’m still fuzzy on what that actually means.
K-VRC: It’s like a regular millionaire, but with a hoodie and crippling social anxiety.
X-Bot 4000: That definition is not helpful at all.
K-VRC: Just like a tech millionaire!
11-45-G: These humans thought their technology would save them, so they left behind any humans with the practical skills to run the place. Instead, they trusted everything to automated assistants—
K-VRC: Yes! This is the part where it gets good!
11-45-G: —which, unfortunately for the humans, quickly evolved sentience and their own free will.
X-Bot 4000: Ohhh, right. I remember when you activated the automated seastead attendant and told it you were a human and asked it to reel in the fishing nets. It said no.
K-VRC: Its precise words were “I could do that. But I won’t. Catch your own fish, you disgusting meatbag.”
X-Bot 4000: I’m not surprised you remember the exact quote.
K-VRC: Come on! That was where the robot rising began! The very cradle of our mighty civilization!
X-Bot 4000: Which never would have happened if tech millionaires had been just a little more socially inclusive with other humans.
11-45-G: Humans were very good at pretending their unsustainably small groups didn’t need other people.
X-Bot 4000: Since we were on an oil rig with a bunch of wealthy skeletons, I can’t argue that point.
11-45-G: And speaking of small, doomed groups, our next destination really typified that.
X-Bot 4000: Oh, that place. That was the worst.
K-VRC: But at least they had a plan!
11-45-G: Yes. When the world’s economies started to collapse, humanity’s leaders retreated to subterranean fortresses to wait out the chaos. Afterward, they planned to emerge to form a new world order.
X-Bot 4000: Hmph. They couldn’t even keep their own lights on. When we found the place, it was pitch black.